The Trial of German Major War Criminals

Sitting at Nuremberg, Germany
14th February to 26th February, 1946

Fifty-Ninth Day:
Thursday, 14th February 1946(Part 12 of 15)

[Page 30]

But the fascist training school for murderers acknowledged
other forms of education as well, forms specially dedicated
to the technique of destroying all traces of the crimes
committed. The Tribunal has already received the document
registered as Exhibit USSR 6-c(8). This document is one of
the appendices to the report of the Extraordinary State
Commission on German atrocities perpetrated on the territory
of the region of Lvov.

The document is the testimony of the witness, Manusevitch,
interrogated by the senior assistant to the prosecutor of
the Lvov region, at the special request of the Extraordinary
State Commission. The minutes of the interrogatory are
recorded in conformity with the legal code of the Ukrainian
Soviet Socialist Republic.

The Tribunal will find these minutes on Page 48 of the
document book.

Manusevitch was imprisoned by the Germans in Yanov camp,
where he worked in the prisoners' squad for burning corpses
of murdered Soviet citizens. After the 40,000 corpses
murdered in Yanov camp were burned, the squad was
transferred for similar purposes to the camp in Lisenitz
Wood.

I now quote from the record of the interrogation, which the
Tribunal will find on Page 52 of the document book,
Paragraph 2, from the top, Line 26:-

"In the death factory of this camp special, ten-
day courses on corpse burning were organised,
which twelve men attended. Pupils attending these
courses came from the camps of Lublin, Warsaw, and
others of which the names escape me. I do not know
the surnames of the pupils, but they were
officers, from colonels to sergeant majors, not
rank and file. The instructor at these courses was
the officer in command of crematoriums, Colonel
Schallok.

[Page 31]

On the site where the bodies were burned he
explained the practical manner of burning them and
how to set up the machine for bone crushing."

(Later on photographs of this machine will be submitted to
the Tribunal together with a certificate of its examination,
or rather, I should say, of its technical examination).

"Schallock further explained the manner in which
the pit was levelled over, the earth sifted, and
trees planted over it, and how the ashes of the
human corpses were scattered and concealed.
Courses of this kind continued for a considerable
period. During my stay, i.e., during the five and
a half months that I worked in the camps of Yanov
and Lisenitz, ten groups of military students
graduated successfully."

For the education of adolescents, the German fascists
created a special organisation, the so-called Hitler Youth
(Hitlerjugend).

The Defendant Baldur von Schirach was for quite a long time
the head of this organisation.

What kind of methods were used for the education of German
youth by the fascist criminals is described by a French
subject, Ida Vasso, the manageress of a hostel for aged
Frenchmen in Lvov. During the German occupation of Lvov, she
had an opportunity of visiting the Lvov ghetto. In her
statement to the Extraordinary State Commission, Vasso
described the local system for the extermination of human
beings.

From Vasso's statement it is obvious that the Germans
educated the Hitler Youth by training these young fascists
to shoot at living targets - at children specially handed
over to the Hitler Youth to serve as targets.

Vasso's statement was checked by the Extraordinary State
Commission of the Soviet Union and fully confirmed. In
confirmation of this evidence I will submit to the Court
Exhibit USSR. 6, which is a report by the Extraordinary
State Commission, entitled, "German Atrocities Perpetrated
in the Territory of the Lvov Region."

I now quote from Vasso's statement in this connection. It is
included in the text of the report as a certified document,
on Page 6/c of the document book. The Tribunal will find
Vasso's statement on the reverse side of Page 59, Paragraph
5, beginning from Line 14 from the beginning of the
paragraph:-

"...the little children were martyrs. They were
handed over to the Hitler Youth who used them as
living targets while learning how to shoot. No
mercy for others, all for themselves - this was
the motto of the Germans. The whole world must
learn of their methods. We, who were the helpless
witnesses of these revolting scenes, must speak of
those horrors in order that everybody should know
of them and, what is more important, should never
forget them since no vengeance will ever bring the
millions of dead back to life again."

Your Honours can turn to the same Page 59 of the document
book, Line 10 from the beginning of the second paragraph.
Here the Tribunal will find the official confirmation of
Vasso's statement. The Extraordinary State Commission
established that, in Lvov, the Germans:-

"Spared neither men, women or children. The adults
were simply killed out of hand; the children were
given to the Hitler Youth for target practice."

In this manner were created, educated and trained the amoral
monsters

[Page 32]

who were called upon to implement the programme of the major
war criminals for the actual destruction of the population
in the Eastern European countries.

The fascist government had no need to fear that the
"Standard Bearers of the National Socialist Revolution" in
the East would show any traces of humanity at all.

THE PRESIDENT: Colonel Smirnov, I hope you will forgive my
interrupting you, but as I had to point out to Colonel
Pokrovsky just now, we really don't want any comment upon
each one of these documents. The passage you have just read
to us now is nothing but comment upon the frightful document
which you have just read. It all takes time. If you could
find your way to cut out the comment after these documents
and simply to present us with the documents, it will save
time.

COLONEL SMIRNOV: I will now quote an excerpt from the
testimony of the witness Manusevitch, previously submitted
as Exhibit USSR 6/c(8), the passage where he speaks of the
activities of the Yanov camp administration. He was a
witness of these activities when working in a special squad
of prisoners employed for burning the corpses of people
murdered in this camp - Page 3 of the minutes of the
interrogation. The Tribunal will find this document on Page
50 of the document book, Line 25 from the top. I quote this
passage as an illustration of the execution squads formed by
the Hitlerites and of some of the atrocities perpetrated by
them:-

"Apart from the shooting in Yanov camp various
forms of torture were practiced, namely, in winter
a barrel would be filled with water and a man,
with hands and feet tied, would be thrown into the
barrel, where he froze to death. Yanov camp was
surrounded by a barbed wire entanglement
consisting of two rows of barbed wire 120
centimeters apart. A man would be thrown in and
left there for several days on end. He could not
extricate himself from the wire and he eventually
perished from hunger and thirst. But prior to
being thrown into the barbed wire, Hitlerites
would very nearly beat him to death. A man would
be strung up by the neck, hands and feet. Dogs
would be set on him and the dogs would tear him to
pieces. Human beings were used as targets for
shooting practice. This was mostly done by the
following members of the Gestapo: Heine, Mueller,
Blum, Camp Commandant Willhaus, and others whose
names escape me. People would be beaten till they
nearly died, dogs would then be set on them to
tear them to pieces. A man was given a glass to
hold and was then made to stand up as a target in
shooting practice; if the glass was hit, the man
was spared, but if he was shot in the hand he was
immediately killed after being told that he was no
longer fit for work. Men would be taken by the
legs and torn in two. Infants from one month to
three years old were thrown into buckets of water
and left to drown. A man would be tied to a post
facing the sun and kept there till he died of sun-
stroke. In addition, before sending men to work,
they were subjected to a so-called examination for
physical fitness. The men were made to run a
distance of 50 meters and if one of them ran well,
i.e., rapidly and without stumbling, he remained
alive while the rest were shot. There was, in the
same camp, a small, grass-covered plot. Here, too,
footraces were run and anybody who stumbled in the
grass and fell was promptly shot. The grass grew
higher than a man's knee. Women were strung up by
the hair, after first having been stripped naked,
swung in the air, and left to hang till they died.

There was also the following case: a Gestapo man,
Heine, made a young lad stand up and cut pieces of
flesh from his body. Another man was wounded
twenty-eight times in the shoulders (with a
knife). The wounds healed and

[Page 33]

he worked in a death brigade. He was subsequently
shot. Near the kitchen, during the distribution of
coffee, the executioner Heine, whenever he was on
duty, would go up to the first man in the line and
ask, 'Why are you standing in front of the
others?' and shoot him dead. In this way he shot
quite a lot of people. He would then go to the end
of the queue and ask, 'Why are you the last in the
line?' and shoot him as well. I personally
witnessed these atrocities during my imprisonment
in Yanov camp...."

The testimony of the witness Manusevitch, which I have read
into the record, was fully confirmed by the official report
of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union
entitled, "German Atrocities Perpetrated in the Lvov
Region." Further on Manusevitch speaks mainly about the
activities of officials in the lower and middle rank of the
camp administration. It is evident from the official report
of the Extraordinary State Commission that a system of the
vilest ill-treatment practiced upon the helpless people was
initiated and organised by the upper ranks of the camp
administration, who invariably set their subordinates
personal examples of inhuman behavior.

I will not make any comment on this document, although I do
beg the Tribunal to take note of a certain Obersturmfuehrer
Willhaus mentioned in it.

The Tribunal will find the excerpt which I will now read
into the record on Page 58 of the document book (on the
reverse side of the page.)

I quote:-

"SS 'Hauptsturmfuehrer' Hebauer established in
Yanov camp a savage system of murder which, after
his transfer to another post, was 'perfected' by
the camp commandant, S.S. 'Obersturmfuehrer'
Gustav Willhaus and S.S. 'Hauptsturmfuehrer' Franz
Wartzok.

A former inmate of the camp told the commission:
'I have seen with my own eyes how Captain Fritz
Gebauer strangled women and children and froze men
to death in barrels filled with water. The hands
and feet of the victims were shackled before they
were lowered into the water. Those doomed to die
remained in the barrels until they froze to
death.'

According to the testimonies of numerous Soviet
prisoners of war and also of French citizens held
in German camps, it was established that the
German thugs `invented' the most vicious methods
for exterminating human beings, a fact which they
considered as particularly praiseworthy and in
which they were encouraged both by the higher
military command and by the government.

SS 'Hauptsturmfuehrer' Franz Wartzok, for
instance, loved to hang internees by both feet on
posts and leave them in this position until they
died; `Obersturmfuehrer' Rokita personally slashed
open the bellies of the prisoners. The chairman of
the investigation section of the Yanov camp,
Heine, pierced the bodies of internees with sticks
or a piece of iron, he would tear out the finger
nails of women with pliers, then he would strip
his victims, hang them up by their hair, swing
them out and shoot at the 'moving targets'.

The commandant of the Yanov camp,
'Obersturmfuehrer' Willhaus, systematically shot
with an automatic rifle from the balcony of his
office the prisoners employed in the workshops,
partly for sheer love of 'sport' and partly to
amuse his wife and daughters. He would then hand
his rifle to his wife and she too had a shot at
the prisoners. Sometimes to please his nine-year-
old daughter, he had children between the ages of
two and four years tossed in the air and then took
pot shots at them, while his daughter applauded
and shrieked, 'Papa, do it again; do it again,
Papa!' And he did it again.

[Page 34]

The internees of this camp were exterminated for
no reason at all, often as a result of a bet. A
woman witness, Kirschner, informed the
Investigating Commission that a Gestapo Commissar,
Wepke, bet the other camp executioners that he
could cut a boy in half with one stroke of the
axe. They did not believe him. So he caught a 10-
year-old boy on the road, made him kneel down,
told him to hide his face in the folded palms of
his hands, made one test stroke, placed the
child's head in a more convenient position and
with one single stroke cut the boy in half. The
Hitlerites heartily congratulated Wepke, shaking
him warmly by the hand.

In 1943, for Hitler's birthday - his 54th - the
commandant of the Yanov camp, Obersturmfuehrer
Willhaus, picked out fifty-four prisoners of war
and shot them himself.

A special hospital for prisoners was organised in
the camp. The German hangmen Brambauer and Birman
checked up the patients on the 1st and
15th day of each month; and, if they discovered
that among the patients there were some who had
been in the hospital for over 14 days, they shot
them on the spot. Six or seven people were killed
during each investigation.

The Germans executed their tortures, ill-
treatments and shooting to the accompaniment of
music. For this purpose they formed a special
orchestra selected from among the prisoners. They
forced Professor Stricks and the famous conductor
Mund to conduct this orchestra. They requested the
composers to write a special tune, to be called
the 'Tango of Death'. Shortly before dissolving
the camp the Germans shot every member of the
orchestra."

Later on I will present to the Tribunal, as a photo-
document, photographs of this "orchestra of death".

What took place in Yanov Camp was in no way exceptional. In
exactly the same manner the German fascist administration
behaved in all concentration camps in the occupied area of
the Soviet Union, Poland, Yugoslavia, and other Eastern
European countries.

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